Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1887-08-12
TALMAGE'S SERMON,
The Weekly Discourse Of the Great
Brooklyn Preacher
Subject: "EmpIoyments of Fl ca ven.

eug " TIC HDNtNt us AINlS among inc cap
ttUes by the riUer of Chebdr, that the heavens
vere opened. Ezekiel l.. l.
Ezekiel, with others, had been expatriated,
and while in foreign slavery was standing on
the banks of the royal canal which he and
other serfs had been condemned to dig by the
order of Nebuchadnezzar--thi royal canal,
IN the text called the river of Chebar; the
illustrious exile had visions of Heaven. In
deed, 1t is almost always so that the brightest
visions of heaven come not to those who are
on mountain tops Of prosperity but TO some
John on desolate Patmos, or to some Paul in
Mamertine dungeon, or to some Ezekiel
standing on the banks of a ditch he has been
compelled to dig-yea, to the weary, to the
heart broken, to those whom sorrow has ban.
shed
The text is very particular to give us the
exact time of the vision. 1t was in the thir-
tieth year, and in the fourth month"; and in
the fifth day Of the month. So you have had
visions of earth you shall never forget You
remember the year,you remember the month,
you remember the day, you remember the
hour. Why may not we have some such
vision this morning, and it be in the sixth
month, and in the fourth day Of the months
The question is often silently asked, though
perhaps never audibly propounded; What
ure our departed Christian friends doing
now" The question is more easily answered
Than you might perhaps suppose. Though
tLlCiO has NOlllt uO ItCGIb lnOelllSoliCc llOll
the heavenly city, and we seem dependent
upon the story Of eighteen centuries ago, still
Think we may from strongest inference de-
eide what are the present occupations of our
transferred kinsfok
After God has made a nature he never
eradcates the chief characteristics of its
temperament. You never knew a man
phlegmatic in temperament to become san
gline in temperament You never knew
man Sanguine in temperament to become
ph!egmatic in temperament Conversion
plants new principles i'll the SOUL but Paul
and John are Just as different from each
other after conversion as they were different
from each other before conversion. If con-
version does not eradicate the prominent
characteristics of the temperament neither
will death eradicate them.
You have, then, only by a sum in Subtrac.
ton and a sum in addition to decide what are
the employments of your departed friends in
the better world You are to subtract from
them all earthly grossness and add all earthly
goodness, and then you are to come to the
conclusion that they are doing now in heaven
what in their best moments they did on earth.
Ihereason that many people never start for
heaven is because they could not stand it if
they got there ii it should turn out to be the
rigid and formal place some people photo
graph it.
We like to come to church, but we would
not want to stay here till next Christmas.
We like to hear the Halleluiah Chorus, but
we would not want to hear it all tho time for
fifty centuries. 1t might be on some great
occasion it would be possibly comfortable to
wear a crown of gold weighing several
pounds, but it would be an affection to wear
such a crown forever. In other words, we
run the descriptions of Heaven into the
ground while we make that which was in
tended as especial and celebrative to be the
exclusive employment of Heaven. You
might as well, if asked to describe the habits
of American society, describe Decoration
Day, or a Fourth of July, or an autumnal
Thanksgiving as though it were all the time
that way.
lam not going to speculate in regard to the
future world, but must by inevitable laws
of inference and deduction and common
sense conclude that in Heaven we will be just
as different from each other as we are now
different, and hence, that there will be at
least as many different employments in the
celestial world as there are employments
here. Christ is to be the great love, the
great joy, the greatraptme, the great worship
of Heaven; but will that abolish employment
No more than loves on earth--paternal,
filial, fraternal, conjugal love-abolish earthly
occupation.
In the first place, remark that all those Of
our departed Christian friends who on earth
found great JOY in the fine arts are now in
dulging their tastes in the same rection. On
earth they had their gladdest pleasures amid
pictures and statuary, and in the study of the
laws of light and shade and perspective
Have you any idea that that affluence of
faculty at death collapsed and persisted?
Why so, when there is more for them to look
at and they have keener appreciation of the
beautiful, and they stand amid the very
looms where the sunsets and the rainbows
and the spring mornings are woven?
Are you so obtuse as to suppose that because
the painter drops his easel and the sculptor
his chisel and the eneraver his knife, that
therefore that taste, which he was charging
and intensifying for forty or fifty years. is
entirely obliterated? These artists, or these
friends of art, on earth worked in coarse
material and with imperfect brain and with
frail hand. Now they have carried their art
into larger liberties and into wider circum-
ference They are at their old business yet,
but without the fatigues, without the lmita-
tons without the hindrances of the terres-
trial studio
Raphael could now improve upon his mas
terpiece of Michael the Archangel now
that he has seen him, and could improve upon
his masterpiece of the Holy Family now that
he has visited them. Michael Angelo could
better present the Last Judgment after he has
seen its flash and heard the rlImhling batter
ing rams of lis thunder. Exquisite colors
here, graceful lines here, powerful charos-
~ ll6ISs Dltu l am pHTSututI IlI1J ulle gran
der studios and the brighter galleries are
higher up by the winding marble stairs
of the sepulchre, and that Turner and Hol-
man, and Hunt, and Rembrandt, and Titan,
and Paul Veronese if they exercised saving
faith in the Christ whom they portrayed up,
on the canvas, are painters yet, but their
strength of faculty multiplied ten-thousand
fold The reason that God took away their
eye and their hand, and their brain was that
he might give them something more timber,
more wieldly, more skilful, more multiple
tant
Do not, therefore, be melancholy among
the tapestries, and the bric-a- bric and the
embroideries, and the water colors, and the
works of art which your departed friends
used to admire Do not say: II am sorry
they had to leave all these things" Rather
say: 81 am glad they have gone up to higher
artistic opportunity and appreciation" OuI
friends who found so much Joy in the fine
arts on earth are now luxuriating in Louvres
and Luxembourgs celestial.
| remark again, that all our departed
Christian friends who in this world were
passionately fond of music are still regaling
that taste in the world celestial. The Bible
says so much about the music of Heaven
that it cannot all be fgurative The Bible
over and over again speaks of the songs o.
Heaven. If Heaven had no songs of its owl
vast number of those Of earth would have
been taken up by the earthly emigrants
Surely the Christian at death does not los,
his memory. Then there must be millions o
souls in Heaven who know "Coronation, )
and Antioch" and "Mount Pisgah," and
"Old Hundred The leader of the eterna
orchestra need only once tap his baton and
oil Heaven will be ready for the hallelujah
Cannot the soul singl How often we com
pliment some exquisite singer by saying
There was so much eoul in her music
In heaven it will be all soul, until the body
after while comes up in the resurrection
and then there will be an additional heaven
Cannot the soul hearl If it can hear ther
1t can hear music. Do not, therefore, let il
be in your household when some mombel
laa 20 = l. 4